


Negotiated Settlement

by SoniaVice



Category: King & Maxwell
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:59:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoniaVice/pseuds/SoniaVice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michelle and violence, she's been negotiating this all her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negotiated Settlement

#### Opening Salvo

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but you can't go in there." 

Michelle tried a big smile, but the guard was already looking past her—showing her he considered her dealt with, dismissed. It was a good tactic that usually worked on most people. Michelle wasn't most people.

#### Escalation

Michelle knew she could do this.

Michelle (not Mick, okay, and not little Mick ever, no matter what) pumped the pedals on her bike, rising up off the seat to power up to speed. She flicked her eyes to Jimmy Gonzales as he put both arms up, the sign for no cars. She made a wide turn, moved over into the oncoming lane and aimed for the sweet spot in the road at the top of the crown. 

See, other kids made the mistake of thinking the centre line was the thing to aim for, but she had studied the terrain and she knew the top of the crown was just to one side of the line. 

She settled in her seat, bent forward, and roared down Wipeout Hill. The wind yanked at her hair, twisting it into straw dollies while it scoured her face with grit. 

Getting down the hill was the easy part. Stopping before Spring Street without wiping out was the real trick. She had to ditch the bike in the end, hopping off one way while the bike skidded the other way into the curb. 

Michelle didn't have a scratch on her, and the bike looked no worse than it ever had. 

Brandon and Kelly ran up waving their granddaddy’s old stopwatch and shouting out numbers.

She had beat her own record, just like she'd known she would.

#### Resistance

"Mick, you can't do things like that," her father said. 

"But I did," Michelle said. She had to let the Mick thing go right now, bigger things were on the table.

"Mick, you know what I mean. You might get hurt. Hurt bad."

"Yeah," Michelle said, drawing out the word in a really obnoxious way, because seriously, he had to know that was the point right? She was too good to wipe out.

"Yeah, Mick. You crack your head on the pavement, it's not going in a cast for a few months," her dad flicked his finger at her left arm., "it's lights out." 

Her arm was last summer, when she'd grown two inches and could hardly walk without falling down. That was different.

"But-"

"Mick, I'm serious. You wear a helmet all the time on that bike, and you know darn well, my boys will tell me if they see you without it."

His boys. Oh, yeah, his boys would snitch. That's what they were, bunch of snitches. It was totally not fair that he had the entire police force to watch her every move. Not fair. 

But she knew saying all that would get her nowhere but to her room. She had to make him see that she was old enough, and good enough to do what she wanted. She had to.

"And no more stupid stunts like Wipeout Hill, you hear?" he said, before she could even get a word in. 

"Yeah, I hear," she said.

#### Redirection

"Come on, Mick, you can do it."

Michelle ignored the Mick. There was no point in complaining, because Mr. Thomas was one of her dad's officers when he wasn't teaching karate at the Y on the weekends. 

Michelle moved in on Katie, (Katie Lymond, who was tiny and fast and hit hard, not Katie MacKay who was big and slow and hit hard). Michelle was afraid she did _not_ hit hard. She tried a kick move, but Katie just sort of leaned back and then surged back at Michelle and, well. There was the ceiling at the Y again, with that one old stain that looked like a Y, which Michelle had thought was really funny the first twelve times she'd had time to study it. 

Mr. Thomas told her to take a break, so she crawled upright and then slumped on the bench. 

Katie paired up with Katie, which was a grudge match as well as a miss match. 

Mr. Thomas let them go at it, not paying any attention at all, mostly because he was eyeing up Michelle. She slumped a little smaller.

He came over anyway, and she knew he'd try to talk to her. Just like last week, and the week before. 

She'd loved the idea of Karate, every time one of her brothers took advantage of their size and got the best of her, she fantasized about sending them flying through the air with a well placed kick. But the reality was no fun at all. She couldn't even connect with half the girls her age who were all way shorter than her, and she never sent anyone flying. 

"Look, Mick," Mr. Thomas said, and he was an okay guy, even if he was one of her dad's "boys", so she looked up and made like she was listening and all respectful and stuff, "you're pulling your punches. I've seen all kinds of kids here, and there's always a few who don't have the nerve right off to really hit someone.

"It's not that you can't, it's that there's like a block in your head, like a brake you don't even know is on. We got to figure how to take the brakes off, see?"

"How be she fights me," drawled a voice from behind her.

Michelle slumped back into a curl of despair, all thoughts of respectful behaviour gone. 

"No, no, no." she said, but no one was listening to her. 

Mr. Thomas was looking at her stupid brother like he thought this idea was just peachy, because of course it was stupid JT come to cause trouble or, like, walk her home or something. Mr. Thomas was nodding, and there was no convenient tornado to rip the whole top off the Y or anything so she had to go out there in front of Katie and Katie and all the other girls she'd lost to, and lose even bigger to JT.

JT. Her life was a disaster movie, like the Titanic or something, just without any guys who weren't her brothers. So a bigger disaster.

JT didn't even have the right clothes, he was just standing there grinning at her in his jeans and old smelly T shirt. 

"Bet you can't touch me," he said, and he winked at her like—she didn't even know what it was like, but it made her see red. Like for real, like actual red that looked like those big plastic circles they fit over the lights for the school dance, only over her eyes.

She made a big arggh sort of sound, which Mr. Thomas sort of frowned on, but she didn't care, and she ran at stupid JT and she didn't even aim, just launched at him. She got her leg up at the last second, and she knew her form was terrible, but the thunk that vibrated right up her leg, right up to her face, even, and made her jaw snap shut was awesome.

JT didn't fall down, but he staggered way back, so she rolled right up and tried the sweeping kick to knock him down, and he went! JT was down. This was the best day ever.

She rolled up, and JT was coming for her, but no damn way. She slithered aside and turned and got him right on the butt, sent him crashing. 

She _could_ do this, she actually could do it. Katie better watch out. 

Both of them.

#### Propaganda

"You can't do things like that, Michelle."

Michelle smiled. She didn't want to, but she'd aced that course in body language and facial cues, and she was getting lots of practical uses for it rooming with Nancy Blanchard. 

"Like what," she asked, wincing a little at the edge that cut a bit on the what. She needed to practice a little more. So kind of Nancy to provide opportunities.

"Show up the men, Michelle. Especially not, you know." Nancy looked around the room when she said that, like she always did when she wanted to make sure they were alone, even here in their room with the door shut. Evidence of a guilty mind, Michelle figured.

"I don't know, Nancy, and I really, really don't want you to enlighten me." Michelle smiled again, trying to stave off the defensive rush of words Nancy always had to fall back on. Because that first part, that Michelle wasn't going to let go by. "I'm not 'showing up the men', Nancy, I'm giving it 100% in unarmed training and on the range, and if that means I beat some of those guys, well they're big boys, you know."

"I know, honey, but you have to let them have their illusions, you know?"

"Why?"

Nancy looked shocked, as if this was all obvious. And Michelle wasn't bothering to hide behind her training now. She was incensed, or maybe about to laugh for the next two weeks. It could go either way.

Michelle tried to imagine the alternate universe where she'd been inclined to prop up any illusions of male supremacy in the testosterone laden house she'd grown up in. It would have been a full time job. Two maybe. They would have had to hire someone to come in and help out on weekends at least. 

"Now, Michelle, you have to know that men like that...well if you don't let them think they're in charge, they'll find some way to make sure you change your mind. I'm just concerned for your safety you know. I mean, aside from anything else, you'll end up hurt trying to prove how tough you are in class."

Nancy took advantage of Michelle's moment of speechlessness to pat her patronizingly on the hand and bustle out of the room to spend the evening in town.

#### Advice

"You have to, Michelle."

Joe leaned in closer, and his voice dropped to an intimate tone still understandable over the buzz of the crowd in the hotel bar. 

They must look like lovers, Michelle thought, to anyone who might be watching. Michelle let her face go along with that lie. Just for practice. Just for fun. 

They weren't talking about sex, even if it looked like they were. They were talking about violence.

"You have to love it," Joe said, "you have to love how it feels, physically I mean. And you can't ever let that guilty voice in your head that sounds like your mother tell you that you shouldn't love it, or you'll hesitate and you'll end up dead. Or worse, your asset will end up dead."

You have to be the kind of guy that will take the shot. That's what her dad used to say. That's what he'd say when he'd encourage some of his new "boys" to move on to some town bigger and brighter, to go someplace where they could end up in a glass office with their service weapon locked in a drawer.

"I, yeah, I know, Joe," she said. 

She considered what Joe was saying, that maybe she had been trying not to love it, to relish the feel of flesh hitting flesh, to know that her strength, her brains, her guts could beat someone else. It was a rush, no question, and she'd always loved to win. But there was something else about fighting someone, committing violence on their person, that was thrilling in some dark way that made her think they might be talking about sex after all. 

She didn't have her mother's voice in her head, but that didn't mean she hadn't been told often enough what a good girl was and was not.

"I think you do know, most of the time." Joe spun his whisky glass a couple of times, the last drop still clinging to the inside. "Sparing, where it's all abstract, playing pretend with the guys in your class, you give no quarter, better than most of those guys, and that's good, that's what you have to do, but when it's a little more real, you're holding back."

Michelle made to argue, but she'd learned a few hard lessons about arguing with Joe; the guy was usually right about this sort of thing. Probably why they'd made him the trainer to young and innocent wannabe agents like her. 

They'd come to this hotel to work on a training scenario in a realistic setting. Joe was playing the asset and some of his old Service pals were playing the bad guys out to get him. Michelle's team had kept Joe out of their hands today, but it had been close. Too close. If they'd been real bad guys, Joe would have been dead.

"There's citizens and there's criminals," she said, quoting the favourite saying of Lester Michelson, the behavioural science teacher.

Joe snorted and leaned back in his chair, giving her a long look. "That's horseshit," he said, and if you tell ole' Lester that, I'll kick your ass, but that's grade A horseshit right there." 

"I'm not likely to have any heart to hearts with Michelson," Michelle said.

"There's potential threats. That's all there is if you're working protection. You start thinking you can tell by looking that someone is a bad guy, you should go work for DC Metro and forget about the Service. You start thinking you know someone's not a threat because of who they are or what uniform they're wearing, you'll end up one of those agents with a memorial instead of a career."

"Okay, Joe."

"'Okay, Joe', she says. You think about this, kid. And the next time a potential threat shows itself to _be_ a threat, you hit him hard as you can and you smile while you do it."

#### After Action Report

"You can't do that, Miss Maxwell." 

Agent Rigby frowned, an almost imperceptible change from his normal expression. "You can't go around assaulting security guards just because you want to go somewhere you shouldn't."

Michelle smiled, still coming down off the buzz of a good fight. 

"But she did," Sean said—always a lawyer around when you needed one with Sean, "and if she hadn't, you'd be explaining why your witness was dead and the biggest racketeering case in the last decade was falling apart around your ears."

"Mmm," Rigby said.

"I think that's FBI-speak for I know you're right, I'm just not allowed to admit it," Sean said to Michelle.

With Sean there was also always a smart-ass around whether you needed one or not. 

"I could apologize," Michelle said, "or you could go ask Mr. Security Guard–"

"When he wakes up," Sean said.

"If he wakes up," Rigby said.

"You could ask him why he thought two goons from the Van Holt organization, goons wearing three hundred dollar shoes and with gun bulges in their jackets, were really Phil and Pete from Simply Floral."

"Hmm."

Michelle turned to Sean and stage whispered, "That's FBI-speak for that's a very good point Michelle, thank you for mentioning it." 

Michelle could do smart-ass all by herself.


End file.
